Tips on writing forums posts

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Thanks so much for contributing to Apple Developer Forums. We'd love to help you get an answer, but we need a little bit more information from you first. Here's some tips on what to add to your post in order to help us help you.

Provide context to your post

Did you provide enough context of when and how this issue is occurring? Things like platform and Xcode version and language can go a long way.

Posting items like the version can also help you to remember to test on the latest software. If it's a bug that you're noticing, it may have been fixed in a recent update. Avoid stating that you're using the "current version" since these change quickly.

Example to improve on:

Current iOS, Swift

Better example:

iOS 17.5, Swift (UIKit)

Best example:

iOS 12 - iOS 17.5, Swift (UIKit), Xcode 15.4

Specific questions to answer:

  • What platform are you targeting? And what version of that platform?
  • What version of Xcode are you using?
  • What version of the OS are you testing on?

Add test code

Check that it's as easy as possible for someone to reproduce your issue. If you've asked a question along the lines of: "Why isn't ##INSERT_ACTION_HERE## working?", test code can go a long way. If you're posting a link to a project, be sure that it's a newly created project created from one of Xcode's templates that's stripped down to the bare minimum amount of code and files needed to reproduce the issue. Remove any third-party dependencies to focus your project completely on Apple's APIs. See Creating a Test Project for more details.

If you're posting a code snippet, make sure you've posted enough context so that someone helping you can copy the code into their own project without having to read between the lines on the rest of your project. Also, make use of the Code Block button, which inserts triple backquote delimiters, for code snippets or logs.

Example of code block formatting.

Give a thorough description

Don't forget to add a detailed description to your post. If you only posted code, or have a minimal description, please add some details to describe your issue and, if applicable, steps needed to reproduce it and what you've tried.

Specific questions to answer:

  • What specific API are you using?
  • What are the exact steps you took?
  • If nothing failed, what results did you see? And what were you expecting?
  • If you filed a bug, what was the bug number?
  • What else have you tried?

Describe any errors

If you're seeing an error message, post the exact wording or a screenshot. If it results in a crash, attach the crash logs to your post.

Specific questions to answer:

  • If something failed, what are the symptoms of that failure?
  • If an API returned an error, what was that error?

Re-read the post

Come back to your post as if you'd never seen it before. Pretend you're going to answer it and think about what it may be missing, even if it wasn't mentioned in the above list. Any of this information, the more the better, is helpful to someone reading your post for the first time. A detailed description goes a long way in getting more detailed answers.

These tips should result in some more helpful answers from us and the developer community!

Revision History

  • 2024-05-29 Initial version.
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